Happiness Research Still Makes Me Unhappy

I'm not sure why this is any different than a medical claim that "people felt physical pain when they did [x]." We do not, however, doubt the validity of most medical claims about pain.

"I believe that you do not learn about economic behavior by watching what people say in response to a survey."

Are you serious? Do you believe that you can learn anything from surveys? I think using happiness research to justify retarded economic policies is stupid, but saying economic behavior cannot be judged from surveys is totally off the deep end. It makes our side look desperate and dishonest.

I am with you, Arnold. If I have ever been happy, I have forgotten when and how it felt. I witness a World where problems accure as fast as population, and see less and less actual action on them. I grew up on a farm, and know a simpler life is the only root for a happy life, yet We daily make life more complicated. I think We all want to experience Death befoe We get there. lgl

I'll disagree with Michael of 2blowhards.com:

People such as Norman Vincent Peale, Dale Carnegie, and Martin Seligman make an honest living changing the ratio of optimism to pessimism. Here I am using optimism as a proxy for happiness (a weak point, I'll concede).

Arnold Kling, you really ought to read Martin Seligman's works. Optimistic people recover more quickly from psychological traumas, are less discouraged from setbacks, etc.

One more item - reading Arnold Kling and Lawrance George Lux gives a whole new meaning to the notion of dismal science. Cheer up, guys!

This happiness stuff is going to evolve into the way that policies are sold. It may be goat entrials, and may reek of marketing, but it seems to be the way the game is played.

Three examples from my cursory web browsing this afternoon... c|net has astory about Earthlink being the most liked ISP. Pure marketing -- let's consider that as a baseline. Via NRO, in a story about German anti-Americanism, a statement that 25% of (formerly) West Germans want the Berlin Wall back, and widespread East German feeling that things were better under Communism!!! Implication being that Schroeder foments these feelings so as to further socialize the country.

Third example... I posted a comment about federal overtime rules to a recent TCS essay of yours. Basic point was that such rules which force a 5 day, 8-4/9-5 workday on so many workers cause problems like traffic congestion, fewer personal days for workers, etc. Someone writes back and says that line of argument makes sense (in wanting less regulation of the work week) but doesn't Bush just want to let employers exploit employees? This makes no sense. When I was growing up and my Dad was a manager for the phone company, he would work some pretty long weeks and still have work to take home on the weekend. We lived a pretty comfortable upper-middle-class existence. Most of my friends' Dads worked just as hard and put in just as many hours. I look at my friends today who have kids my age and live a comfortable lifestyle. They never bring home work on weekends and rarely have to "work late". If anything, the historical trend is that as we get more productive, we are self-regulating to not overwork and happier for it. Or put our long hours into our own things (hobbies, startups, etc.). Our laws ought to be consistent with how we seek to arrange our lives to be happier.

The reason to take this happiness stuff seriously is that it is a powerful means of marketing policy. It's just being used (to mis-paraphrase John Kerry) by the wrong people to market the wrong policies right now.

Happiness as a metric of life, has been around since the dawn of time. Why else should one live, but to attain happiness.

1) I am basically in agreement with you re your skepticism.

2) Still, even if one could meaningfully measure happiness, one runs into two interesting issues in trying to pursue an increase in Gross National Happiness. First, there is the problem of schadenfreude, pleasure at someone else's misfortune. The second is individual utility functions that take relative rank as an argument. (See Fred Hirsch's book, Social Limits to Growth, or Robert Frank's Luxury Fever). Both of these issues suggest that a great deal of happiness is zero sum.

For Discussion. Why should I take happiness surveys more seriously than goat entrails?

If the same can be said about goat entrails, it has escaped my attention.

What Thomas said; when people get very unhappy, they develop mental illnesses or kill themselves. Happiness surveys track these observable events pretty well.

Surely what we're talking about here is the granularity with which we can speak about happiness - what are it's constituent parts, what are the appropriate units for those parts, etc. None of which means that one can't make entirely reasonable, rational, "scientific" claims about large-scale movements in happiness and unhappiness. Which, at this point, is all we really care about.

Happy to admit to being nothing more than a fan of following these topics. Still ...

Suppose GDP is increasing. And suppose that the best possible research indicates that people are getting unhappier at the same time. Shouldn't economists be expected to take note, and be concerned?

The idea that economics, of all the social sciences, should be that value-neutral seems a little bizarre, no?

Michael-- it's easy to imagine a situation where people with chronic illnesses are able to live longer, but not in full health, thanks to modern medicine. And so they are demonstrably worse off than previously in their life, and know that they are still certain to die soon. Thus, their happiness is lower than average, since it's worse than most of their life. Dragging illnesses out and keeping fighting them might make the pain last longer for family members, too.

In the aggregate, then, this would cause average happiness to decrease. But, I don't think one would then argue that the few extra months for the sick would be so terrible. (Some people might well agree that dragging things out makes it worse.) Lower average happiness might occur with greater aggregate happiness.

And that's another reason why I have trouble with happiness surveys. It's too easy to construct situations like that.

Happiness research seems valid to me. The idea of a happiness set point really resonates with things that happened in my life.

People tend to have a linear mental model of happiness which acts as a motivator. Thinking that you will be twice as happy if you make twice as much makes you work hard.

Happiness maximization does not automatically require high levels of state redistribution of income. Unemployment is one of the few things that does cause long term unhappiness. Too much redistribution could increase unemployment and thus decrease overall happiness.